Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

Today we have before the chamber the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2019. Labor do not oppose this bill; however, we do have significant concerns with the government's track record in this space.

The bill before us applies indexation of funding for the Australian Research Council to the existing appropriation amounts for approved research grants between 2019 and 2022. It also inserts a funding cap for financial year 2022-23 by amending the Australian Research Council Act. However, let's not pretend that this government is in any way committed to higher education and Australia's global competitiveness in research and development in our nation. Time and time again, this government's track record has been to undermine Australian universities as well as research and development in this country.

Under the coalition we have seen some $328½ million ripped from university research. Universities Australia, the peak body for Australian universities, has forecast that government investment in research and development in Australia is set to reach its lowest level as a share of our economy in four decades—that is, just half a per cent of GDP in 2019. Senators—through you, Madam Deputy President—that is lower than the level of investment that we had as a nation in 1978. Despite the forecasts, last year's midyear update cut $328½ million from research funding. Universities Australia said at the time that such deep cuts to university research were 'a ram raid on Australia's future economic growth, prosperity, health and development'.

We also know, as has been well debated in this place, that ministerial vetos have been used to restrict funding for research that doesn't support the education minister's world view. Political interference in independent, peer-reviewed grant processes is absolutely unacceptable. The ARC has a rigorous process for coming up with its recommendations on research funding, and it should not be interfered with. Ministers should rely on expert advice for the awarding of these grants and should have no role in picking and choosing which individual grants should be funded. I also note that the current government has started delaying the announcements of these grants to suit local political announcements so that they can do this with local members. This is unreasonably interfering with universities' and academics' control over these grants and their independence.

Labor, on the other hand, is very proud of our record in this space, supporting universities in their research and their education roles. We can't separate this debate about funding for the ARC from the more than $2 billion that has been ripped from Australia's universities. This has seen some 200,000 Australians denied the opportunity of a university education. We used to have a system that was demand driven and this government reduced it to a cap—a cap that is only just starting now to return to population growth; it doesn't even closely meet demand. Labor went to the election with a strong plan to invest in our universities that would have seen thousands more Australians get the chance to get a degree. That means thousands more Australians—many, many more clever Australians—involved in the kind of research that an advanced economy like ours needs.

We know that Australia will need an additional 3.8 million university qualifications by 2025. Yet when it comes to our higher education system, we have seen this government's policy, time and time again, has been simply to cut and cut. This flows through not just to opportunities for Australians but also to our nation's research outcomes. These cuts have come at a time when our ranking and spending globally on research and development is falling. The latest growth expenditure in research and development as a proportion of GDP has decreased from 1.88 per cent to 1.79 per cent according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The total human resources devoted to business R&D is still well below what was devoted when the government took office. In 2013-14, total person years of effort was almost five per cent lower. In other legislation before this place, in the R&D tax incentive bill, we can't see any improvement in these figures. Business R&D spending has hit 0.9 per cent of GDP, falling below one per cent of GDP in previous data. It's simply not good enough to have this downward overall trend in research and development under this government's watch—one that stakeholders can see could be exacerbated by the very legislation before us.

Recently the Australian Institute of Company Directors detailed in their report that Australia's total gross domestic spending on R&D is currently ranked 21st within the OECD, and that while the global trend is for national business expenditure on R&D to grow, they say—and the figures are there—that Australia's has fallen. Our investment levels are below countries such as South Korea, Israel, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Singapore. We are close to the bottom of the OECD rankings for collaboration between industry and researchers and, according to the OECD index of research and development investment by government, Australia sits at 107, having fallen from 114 in 2017-18.

Good quality research and development in this country is absolutely critical to our success as a nation. It's critical to the sustainment of so many different industries as our economy navigates periods of really fast innovation. It leads people to conclude that this government cannot be trusted with education and cannot be trusted with research and development. On the other hand, I'm really proud of our track record. We uncapped university places in 2008, when we were in government, and I can proudly tell the chamber that by 2016 the number of students from poorer backgrounds was up by 55 per cent. Indigenous student numbers had jumped by 89 per cent, enrolments of students with a disability had more than doubled and enrolments of students from country areas had grown by 48 per cent. By 2016, an extra 220,000 students had had the opportunity of a uni education. Many of these students were the first in their family to attend university.

Two hundred thousand more students: that is about the same number, according to modelling, who have missed out under this government's watch. This has a direct impact on the skills our economy needs to innovate and to conduct research and development. The Australian Industry Group said that 75 per cent of businesses it had surveyed are struggling to find the qualified workers they need. That is a great shame, because we know that a great education is a ticket to a lifetime of opportunity for individuals and a ticket to a wealthier and more productive nation. It is a ticket to world-class research that benefits everybody. A university education transforms the lives of individuals and is one of the best investments that any government can make. It has the power to close the gap in just one generation and has a spillover effect on our whole community. Investing in maintaining our world-class universities is good for all of us. Maintaining the independence and integrity of the Australian Research Council is good for all of us, as is funding it properly. We're extremely disappointed that the government chose to tie funding for national disaster relief to education and infrastructure funding last year. When the government moved to abolish the Education Investment Fund, this stripped universities of much-needed capital support for their research.

When you lock someone out of an education you lock them out of a job. But when you block research you damage Australia's international competitiveness and undermine growth in skilled, well-paid jobs. We on the Labor side in this place call on Simon Birmingham to explain, which he has not done, his decision when, as Minister for Education and Training, he sought to overrule the ARC's recommendations. Ministers in general should be called on to publicly explain when they veto an ARC recommendation, which is still possible under the current act but should not be possible at all. Simon Birmingham, when education minister, vetoed 11 research projects that were specifically recommended by the Australian Research Council. There was no public announcement of these decisions, but the decisions came to light at Senate estimates in evidence given by the Australian Research Council. Senator Birmingham was asked to justify his decisions and said simply that the 11 projects were not in the national interest. He did not say what he meant by that. The 11 projects that Senator Birmingham decided were not in the national interest included research into the social impact of shutting down the Australian car industry, research into responses to climate change by the MCG and other sporting venues, and a comparative study of Indigenous politics in the United States and Australia.

We know that when Minister Tehan took over from Senator Birmingham he defended his predecessor's intervention. He announced that grants would now be subject to a new national interest test. This completely overlooks the fact that applicants were already required to submit an impact statement setting out their project's compliance with national priorities in science and research and explaining how it would maximise economic, environmental, social and/or cultural benefit to Australia. So we have Dan Tehan's new 'tick a box' form of notification of ministerial intervention. This does not go far enough. Ministers must be prepared to front up and explain their decisions. The Australian Research Council was also subjected to political interference under Minister Brendan Nelson when he vetoed 10 projects in the humanities and climate change research area. It appears that climate change denial is a longstanding tradition among Liberal Party members and that that denial knows no bounds even when it comes to important research on climate change.

The government has politicised university research grants even further. I note that Australian researchers have accused the coalition government of delaying the announcement of grants for political advantage. Researchers have had to comply with embargoes of up to a month until the grants are formally announced by Minister for Education Dan Tehan, often through a press release with a coalition MP. We've even seen MPs from the coalition in lower house seats make research announcements in Labor or Greens seats. That's pretty extraordinary. Universities Australia has complained about the logistical challenge to universities in satisfying the dual requirements of maintaining an embargo on the grant whilst pursuing activities in relation to the operation of the grant. I call on the government to take that issue seriously.

Today in the chamber— (Time expired)